Pencil

References

• Graphite Grading Scale Explained
• Teaching Mrs. Tingle
• The Lake House
• MacGyver
• Romancing the Stone
• Air America
• Fyre Festival
• John Cena
• Michael Cera
• Almost Plausible: Belt
• This is the End
• Youth in Revolt
• Futurama
  • Amazon Women in the Mood
• Prison Wallet
• Minecart

Corrections

Potential minor spoiler for Teaching Mrs. Tingle, but in the episode Emily said that after the students are accused of cheating they accidentally kill Mrs. Tingle, and that’s not quite what happens in the film.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
Okay, well, that explains why he is in the jungle in a plane.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And also, he doesn’t really know the pilot that well.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because it’s not his pilot, and they haven’t spent a lot of time together.

[Emily]
But they will, and they’ll fall in love.

[Thomas]
I mean, maybe. Sure.

[Shep]
Is it John Cena and-

[Emily]
Michael Cera.

[Shep]
Michael Cera, again?

[Thomas]
It’s been a while since we’ve brought them out. I mean, I can picture this. So.

[Shep]
The twist is that Cena, of course, is the tech CEO.

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And Cera is the bush pilot.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Of course. Absolutely.

[Shep]
The experienced, rough-and-tumble bush pilot.

[Emily]
Michael Cera.

[Shep]
Michael Cera.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. This is a podcast about screenwriting and the writing process in general. And today’s object can also be helpful when it comes to writing. We’ll be creating a movie plot about a Pencil. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and with me are my pair of number twos, Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Number two also means poop.

[Thomas]
Ah, so which one are you?

[Shep]
Number two.

[Thomas]
Perfect.

[Emily]
I prefer to be called HB. Thank you.

[Shep]
HB?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Oh, is this a type of lead?

[Thomas]
It’s a type of pencil.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s what they call number two pencils other places in the world.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Emily]
That’s what they call it in Europe.

[Thomas]
Well, speaking of Shep and Europe. Shep, you’re up. Let’s hear your pitch first.

[Shep]
Okay. A corrupt government is attempting to control the press. They have soldiers with guns. Reporters have just pencils. What are they supposed to do with those? Write the truth.

[Thomas]
So was this a pitch or are you just stating facts about how the world works currently?

[Shep]
Yes and yes. Alright, my other pitch is high schooler’s test cheating scheme goes awry, and in a panic, they murder the assistant teacher with their own pencil.

[Thomas]
Wow. Lot on the line.

[Emily]
Isn’t this Teaching Mrs. Tingle?

[Shep]
I don’t know what that is.

[Thomas]
Is it?

[Shep]
Oh, they’re accused of cheating by their vindictive teacher.

[Emily]
Ah, that’s what it is. And then they accidentally kill her.

[Shep]
Well, then that story has already been done. I was trying to think of things like the least consequential. Like, your high school grades don’t matter, really, but killing someone matters a lot.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right. Mm hmm.

[Shep]
So it’s like this is the biggest overreaction to something that doesn’t matter, but when you’re a teenager, everything seems like it’s important. That’s it for me.

[Thomas]
All right, Emily, let’s hear what you have.

[Emily]
Melody is an artist who is known for her hyperrealistic pencil drawings. She has a decent following on social media, and she makes enough money to be a full-time artist. She is approached by a wealthy man to do a series of commissioned drawings. He won’t give her specifics unless she accepts the job and signs an NDA.

[Shep]
Don’t do it!

[Emily]
He’s offering her an obscene amount of money.

[Shep]
Okay, maybe do it a little.

[Emily]
Too much to pass up. She accepts the job. She’s invited to his beach house where she’ll be working. Once she arrives, she learns that the drawings he wants are of various body parts in different stages of decomposition. He assures her all of the body parts were acquired in legal and respectable ways.

[Shep]
Oh, well, as long as he has assured her, then no problem.

[Emily]
Melody has her doubts, but feels like it’s too late to turn back now. Soon she learns he’s a broker of violent and grotesque art for depraved people. Some are just collectors of the macabre, and some are killers themselves who want their work immortalized.

[Shep]
In pencil.

[Emily]
Hyperrealistic pencil drawing.

[Shep]
Take a photograph.

[Thomas]
Odd if it’s, hold on though, because a photograph, that’s evidence. A drawing, that’s just art. It could just be a thing she made up.

[Shep]
Take a photograph and run it through an art filter and throw away the original photograph.

[Emily]
Okay, but if these killers are sick enough to, like, keep the pieces and let them decompose in a certain way so that it could be captured and immortalized in an art form, maybe part of the thing isn’t just the art that they’re getting, but also, they have one other victim in the artist. By forcing her to witness this horror that they’ve created and thus giving them an extra thrill.

[Shep]
Gross.

[Emily]
Yes. Thomas?

[Thomas]
Alright, I have two. Daniel is a middle-aged man who lost his wife several years ago. His life has never been the same and he wallows in his depression. He refuses to move on or let go of any of her belongings, keeping their home just as it was when she died. One day he needs a pencil to jot down information given to him over the phone and he hurriedly grabs one from her desk. He scribbles down the note on an envelope, but the next day the words on the envelope have changed. The new words are a puzzled reply in his late wife’s handwriting. He realizes he can use the pencil to send her messages in the afterlife and that she will reply. He is excited to reconnect with his wife, but over time she helps him to move on with his life.

[Emily]
Well, I thought she was going to actually be a demon tricking him.

[Shep]
I mean, he could be a friendly demon that helps him move on with his life.

[Thomas]
We can change it.

[Shep]
Okay, he’s excited to reconnect with his wife, but he’s not excited about proof of the afterlife. That seems like a really, really big deal.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I guess that’s something for us to work out.

[Emily]
I think it could be a really sweet story.

[Shep]
It’s The Lake House.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. Well, perhaps my second pitch then. Jack is a rugged pilot with years of experience. Simon is a young tech CEO. Jack is flying Simon over a jungle for some reason when their plane suddenly lurches and goes down. Jack’s survival instincts kick in and he determines that they’re gonna have to leave the plane and find help on foot. Simon brings his laptop bag, which Jack scoffs at. Along the way, though, Simon is able to use the pencils in his bag to help them. In the wet jungle, they use pencil shavings as tinder to start a fire. Unfortunately, the fire attracts bad guys who are in the jungle doing something nefarious, perhaps related to why Jack and Simon were flying over the jungle in the first place. So they’re locked up. But Simon rips the eraser out of the pencil and bites the ferrule flat, creating a makeshift screwdriver, which he uses to help them escape. At another point, Simon uses the graphite in the pencil to short out something electrical, giving them an advantage. Jack tries to sketch out a tactical plan in the dirt, but it’s just dirt, so it’s really not clear what he’s trying to draw. Simon offers him a pencil and paper, which makes the plan much easier to understand. Demonstrating his eventual acceptance of the pencils, Jack uses one to stab a guard in the neck, killing him. Suddenly, reinforcements show up to help. All thanks to the note that Simon left pinned to the flight instrument panel in the plane before they left.

[Shep]
And Simon’s last name? MacGyver.

[Emily]
I was going to say, this is very much like MacGyver, Romancing the Stone, and a little bit of Air America.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Because Jack’s a drug runner, obviously, right? That’s why he’s flying over the jungle?

[Thomas]
Could be. Yeah. Just gotta make a quick stop before they- he takes Simon to his eventual destination.

[Emily]
To Sao Paulo.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because Simon got tickets to carnival.

[Thomas]
He’s taking him to Fyre Festival. He’s a private flight. All right, which pitch do we want to go with?

[Emily]
I would like to point out that my use of the pencil was to make art. True, it’s grotesque and horrifying art, but still art. And both of you pitched stories in which the pencil is used to kill people.

[Shep]
I also pitched a story where the pencil is used to write the truth and stand up to power.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Thomas]
My other pitch is a little bit like that.

[Shep]
The one with the dead wife?

[Emily]
Hey, he’s learning the truth about the afterlife that you apparently refuse to accept.

[Shep]
Yeah. Why doesn’t he ask about the afterlife and what it’s like? And if he does, what does she write? This is important. And if he doesn’t? Why doesn’t he? It makes no sense that that would not be the first thing you talk about. What is it like? Is there weather? Are there other people? Are there famous people?

[Thomas]
Are there tacos?

[Shep]
If there aren’t tacos…

[Emily]
I don’t want to go there.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Look, I’m trying to find a reason to live, and if there aren’t tacos in the afterlife, then I gotta stick around here as long as possible.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Yep. I say we can’t do the dead wife one because I am going to get stuck on the afterlife no matter what we come up with for what she says about the afterlife, it’s going to be unpopular for someone. So that pitch is a trap.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I agree with that. I think it’s a good point. So that one’s out.

[Shep]
So the high schooler test cheating one sounds like whatever movie you said it was.

[Thomas]
Teaching Mrs. Tingle.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I feel like the corrupt government one is too close to real life, and I’d like to escape that for a bit. So.

[Shep]
All right, so killer macabre art, or MacGyver?

[Emily]
MacGyver. Don’t you think?

[Shep]
Well, let’s do MacGyver. And it sounds like we have basically the whole story. So.

[Thomas]
I did try to come up with several ways he could use the pencil so that we didn’t get, like, halfway through it and set up this whole world and be like, “Okay, so he can draw. And, boy, we really should have thought of some other things before we went all the way into this, so.”

[Shep]
I mean, you can use a pencil to make you stick on the ground and track the shadow, and you use that as a compass, and…

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, see, that’s good. Can graphite be magnetized?

[Shep]
I don’t think so.

[Thomas]
I don’t think so, either.

[Shep]
How many pencils does he have?

[Thomas]
Three or four. I don’t know.

[Shep]
He could be a pencil salesman, and he’s got a briefcase full of pencils. Okay, so is he an inventor, or is he a tech CEO? You said tech CEO in your pitch.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I imagine him as a tech CEO, and the reason he takes his laptop bag is because his laptop is in there, and he needs that for his company. There are notes or something that he has on there, and they’re not backed up yet.

[Emily]
He’s a bad tech CEO?

[Thomas]
He’s been traveling in a rickety plane over the jungle.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. He hasn’t been able to connect to the network.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah. Why is he over the jungle?

[Emily]
He’s going to talk to investors. Venture capitalists.

[Shep]
Yeah. Are the investors drug dealers? Like, why is he going to the jungle?

[Thomas]
He’s meeting with Richard Branson.

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s meeting with a venture capitalist who is vacationing in some jungle country. Because it’s cool.

[Thomas]
Right. And this is the only way he can get a meeting with that guy.

[Shep]
Oh, this is that guy’s pilot.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s like, “Oh, I’ll have one of my guys pick you up.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, sure.

[Emily]
There you go.

[Shep]
Because that guy is rich.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So he can afford to have a guy with a plane go and pick up some potential investment opportunity.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s his bush pilot.

[Shep]
Yeah. Everyone’s got a bush pilot when you’re rich.

[Emily]
Yep. Falcon and a bush pilot. It’s the dream.

[Shep]
Yep. Okay, well, that explains why he is in the jungle in a plane.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And also, he doesn’t really know the pilot that well.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because it’s not his pilot, and they haven’t spent a lot of time together.

[Emily]
But they will, and they’ll fall in love.

[Thomas]
I mean, maybe. Sure.

[Shep]
Is it John Cena and-

[Emily]
Michael Cera.

[Shep]
Michael Cera, again?

[Thomas]
It’s been a while since we’ve brought them out. I mean, I can picture this. So.

[Shep]
The twist is that Cena, of course, is the tech CEO.

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And Cera is the bush pilot.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Of course. Absolutely.

[Shep]
The experienced, rough-and-tumble bush pilot.

[Emily]
Michael Cera.

[Shep]
Michael Cera. Can Michael Cera play against type? Is it even possible for him to do that?

[Emily]
Yeah. When he plays himself.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s true. What was the movie? The End of Days, or This Is the End?

[Emily]
This Is the End.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Well, then there’s also a lot of video footage of him, well, a lot of, like, weird skits like that where he’s him, but he’s an asshole.

[Thomas]
I mean, that’s basically half of his character in Youth in Revolt.

[Emily]
Right. It doesn’t have to be them. We don’t have to make it a romance. Not everything has to be about sex.

[Shep]
I mean, it could be them and not be a rom-com. That’s also possible.

[Emily]
This is just true. Could just be a buddy comedy with John Cena and Michael Cera.

[Shep]
Yes. Yep.

[Emily]
I think if we keep putting it out into the universe, eventually we’re gonna get that movie.

[Thomas]
See, they don’t have to fall in love or have sex. But it would be funny if there’s a scene where they have to huddle up to keep warm, and John-

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, the cuddle. Yeah.

[Thomas]
And John Cena wants to be the little spoon.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. I can’t continue with the roles flip. In my mind, it’s rebelling. Gotta be Michael Cera as the CEO who seems incompetent but is actually hyper-competent, and John Cena as the bush pilot who seems competent but is actually inexperienced.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
It’s not that he’s incompetent. He’s just pigheaded and inflexible.

[Emily]
Yeah. He thinks he knows best. Because he’s been out here before. He knows the region.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Michael Cera’s just some computer nerd.

[Thomas]
Some city guy.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. All right, what are the bad guys up to? Are they making drugs in the jungle?

[Shep]
That seems like a very common trope.

[Emily]
What else do you do in a jungle?

[Thomas]
They’re running a bitcoin mining operation.

[Shep]
Powered by what?

[Thomas]
Yeah, there’s the-

[Emily]
There’s a mill.

[Thomas]
They’ve got a water wheel.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
There’s a water mill.

[Thomas]
On the Amazon.

[Shep]
Okay, so they’re found by people in the jungle who are not running drugs because that’s been done many times. And they’re not mining bitcoin because that’s a little unrealistic.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s a cult.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
It’s a cult that has moved to the jungle and built a compound. So why do they grab these people and bring them back to the compound? Are they thinking that these are government agents? Or are they thinking, “Hey, we need more diversity in our gene pool?” You know, everybody is someone’s half-sibling. And so they- There are these two men that could breathe life into their compound, and so they bring them back and are, like, pressing them to mate with all the women.

[Thomas]
Just what every cult needs. More men.

[Shep]
Well, it’s all- Yeah, let’s say it’s an all-women cult. All the men have died off.

[Emily]
They need to make snu snu.

[Shep]
They need to make snu snu. Which I imagine for one of the two is very compelling. And for the other, it’s like, “Oh, we gotta escape.” He’s like, “What do you mean, escape? This is it.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“I’m happy.”

[Shep]
Yeah. “You want to go back to civilization to do what? To do your job? To make money? To impress women? We’re there. Guy, we made it. We’re done. We retire now.”

[Emily]
So what is the downside of the cult?

[Thomas]
Death by snu snu.

[Emily]
Death by snu snu.

[Thomas]
Oh, so what if it’s not that there aren’t enough guys? What if it’s that there are no guys because some, like, rebellious militia has come and taken all of the men and forcibly recruited them or, you know, whatever. Take them to a labor camp, something like that. So it’s just women, and they’re like, “Well, how do we- What do we do now?” And then these two guys show up, and they’re like, “Perfect.” But they don’t tell them about that part. And so then they find out, oh, these death squads are coming or whatever, so they gotta get out of there.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So at first, they’re both into it. They’re like, “This is great.” And the tech guy’s, like, maybe starting to come around to it a little bit. And then they find out about the death squads, and they’re like, “We gotta go.” Oh, are the women. Are they sirens? Are they entrapping men?

[Shep]
No, I like the idea of death squads coming and taking all the men enforceably, recruiting them or having them work, you know, forced labor or whatever.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
I mean, I don’t like that idea, but as a story idea, I like that idea.

[Thomas]
Yes. Yes.

[Shep]
And so the women know that, like, every once in a while, the death squads come back and someone spots them coming. And so they take the two guys and like, “Okay, you guys have to dress up like women. We got to put you incognito so that you can pass as a woman because the death squad is coming.” But the death squad, while they’re there, wants to fuck the women.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, because they got to help out the community.

[Thomas]
Here’s where you get your role reversal. You totally expect that Michael Cera is going to pass, and John Cena is going to be discovered, but it’s the other way around. John Cena totally passes for a woman, and Michael Cera is called out. If we’re doing, you know, sticking with them as our, as our actors.

[Shep]
I’m still picturing them.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I’m realizing how old I am because I was like, “Oh, you know, it would be a funny plot line is like this gay panic thing.” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s, that’s, it’s not 1980.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Emily]
I get stuck in that, too, where it’s like, “Oh, this was really funny in this movie from, like, 20, 30 years ago.” And then I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that’s not funny anymore.”

[Shep]
Right. Because I was like, while the death soldiers are there, they pick out some women to sleep with. One of them is John Cena. That’s the joke, that John Cena is seen as one of the most attractive women in the camp. The reason I was thinking it is when they encounter those soldiers later, John Cena again sees that soldier that picked him, and we don’t know what happened, but they did go off into a room, and there is this moment of longing, like, “Oh, I didn’t know we’d see each other again,” that type of-

[Emily]
A tender moment. Yeah.

[Shep]
Tender moment, right. They’re from different cultures. It could never work out. But the base of that is that the joke is that they picked John Cena.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And the reason it’s funny is because he’s a man. I was like, “Uhh… Is that funny anymore?” Which is unfortunate, because I can see the whole sequence playing out. Because in the third encounter with those guys, that same soldier helps John Cena escape because of their love for each other.

[Emily]
Is it gay panic if we write it in a way that they are just attracted to each other and in love?

[Shep]
But see, in the first scene, it’s gay panic. Like, “Oh, no, they’re gonna pick me, but I’m a man.”

[Thomas]
I guess the only way I could see it working is if, like, Michael Cera is all like, “Oh, my god, how’d you deal with that? Blah, blah, blah.” And John Cena’s just like, “Don’t worry about it, man.” John Cena’s always cool with it. John Cena was never worried about it. He just goes with the flow. He’s just bi or pan or whatever. And Michael Cera is freaked out by it. And so John Cena’s like, “Back off,” you know. Like, “You’re awfully judgy.”

[Emily]
“Don’t yuck my yum.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So what I’m hearing is John Cena plays a kind of suave, go-with-the-flow character. And Michael Cera is, like, a socially awkward. I don’t know if we can sell that.

[Thomas]
I’m just not sure how to, like, because…

[Emily]
Yeah. The only solution I have is just worse.

[Thomas]
Well, it’s just like, you just have to be open to that immediately, because otherwise you’re right. Like, the joke in the first scene is “But two boys! How?” And then it’s like, later, you’re like, “Oh, no. It was always okay. And it was you. You were the problem, audience.” But no, like, we’re trying to set it up to where everyone’s uncomfortable with it.

[Shep]
Yeah, so never mind. Scratch that whole line.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
We missed the chance to do that by-

[Thomas]
40 years.

[Shep]
Yeah, 40 years too late.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They just hide the boys.

[Shep]
Unsuccessfully.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Instead of dressing them up like women, they just try to hide them. And it’s Michael Cera who gives them away, not the big, bulking John Cena. He can easily hide, but Michael Cera cannot for some reason. Like, he’s trying to stand behind a lamp or something.

[Shep]
Right. I mean, there is film trickery you could do where it seems like John Cena has fit into a tiny cabinet, and Michael Cera couldn’t find a place to hide.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I mean, that would be funny.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It would also be kind of be funny if there’s a scene where, like, they’ve been shuffled into a cabin or a hut or whatever. And so Michael Cera’s, like, panicking, and he’s, like, looking around. He can’t find anywhere. And he’s like, “Where should I hide?” And he turns around. The hut is empty. It’s just him in the hut. He’s like, “What the fuck?” And then it turns out, like, in the, like, 5 seconds or whatever, that he’s been looking around. John Cena has fully camouflaged himself because he’s got survivalist training.

[Shep]
Yep, yep.

[Thomas]
He’s good at this sort of thing. He fits, he blends in perfectly somehow.

[Shep]
Yes. Oh, okay. And the soldiers, when they search the cabin, find Michael Cera right away. And Michael Cera is like, “Oh, they found us.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Come on out. That, we’re, we’re both busted. So.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And then all of a sudden, like, the lamp comes to life or the wallpaper moves or whatever, and he’s like, “Why would you say that?”

[Emily]
He was the couch.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So they get taken to the labor camp.

[Shep]
Sure.

[Thomas]
Why would they let him keep his laptop bag and pencils?

[Shep]
Ah, dammit. Thomas, always with the logical questions.

[Emily]
They don’t know about the pencils. And they don’t let him keep the laptop bag. They-

[Shep]
He kept the pencils in his “prison wallet”, and so he has them for later. No, they don’t let him keep the laptop bag, obviously, but they take the laptop bag because it’s got a laptop in it, and that’s valuable. But. So the soldiers have the laptop bag, which has all the pencils in it, except maybe one he has in his pocket because he used one earlier, and then put it in his pocket instead of back in the bag.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. He used it to make the fire.

[Shep]
Yeah. He’s up to make the fire or find directions or, you know, one of the things that we came up with.

[Thomas]
Whatever. Yeah.

[Shep]
Whatever. The point is that he visibly put it in his pocket so we can see it.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
And then the soldiers take the laptop bag. So that’s another thing. They have to escape from their cell or whatever, wherever they’re being kept, and retrieve the laptop bag that has the rest of their supplies in it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay. Because I was going to say, why doesn’t John Cena just try to convince him to leave it? But if it has supplies in it, then that makes sense.

[Thomas]
It goes back to whatever his excuse was about not leaving it in the plane.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
He’s like, “No, I have to have this with me. This is my life’s work.” Or “The only copy of my program is on here,” or whatever. I don’t know.

[Shep]
I mean, it’s a laptop. It’s designed to be carried, and it’s in a bag.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Just sling it over your shoulder, you’re good to go. And also you could put other stuff in the bag. Bottles of water or whatever.

[Thomas]
And John Cena’s like, “All right, but I’m not carrying it.” Michael Cera’s like, “I’m not asking you to.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, I don’t see what the problem is.

[Shep]
Puts it over his own shoulder, like. Oh, could they have a radio phone so they could call for help? But, like, “We can’t get to you. You’re in the middle of the jungle.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“We can have a boat come to you if you get to the ocean.”

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
“So get to the coast, look up your location on your GPS, and tell us your location. We’ll have a boat come out.” So that’s their end goal.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Get to the coast and radio in their location.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s why they need the laptop bag, because it has the radio phone, and the GPS. All right, so they have the clear goal.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
They’ve been found by the cult and then captured by the soldiers.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Now they’re working in the labor camp.

[Emily]
What if the venture capitalist, like, we find out at the end, is the ringleader behind that forced labor?

[Thomas]
Or like, he’s outsourcing something to this company that’s in a third-world country, not realizing it’s all forced labor. And, see, that feels like coincidence. But maybe that’s why he’s going there. Maybe he’s not going there to meet with Richard Branson or whoever. He’s going there to do a surprise inspection of this company. And so their goal is to make it to where this company is. And when they finally get there, he realizes, “Oh, the death squad labor camp, it’s this company. It’s the same thing.” And then he can free all of the prisoners and…

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Should we have them work in the labor camp for a little bit before they escape?

[Shep]
I mean, I think it would be funny if one of the two is always just adapting to whatever situation they’re in.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
So John Cena’s character is like, “All right, we’re in the jungle now, and we’re going to the coast,” and then they get captured by the cult. He’s like, “Okay, we’re living in the cult now. this is also fine.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then they get captured by the soldiers and taken to the labor camp, and he’s just living his best life.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You know, they’re mining for whatever obscure element that Michael Cera’s company is buying.

[Thomas]
Yeah. But they don’t know that yet.

[Shep]
They don’t know that yet.

[Thomas]
They’re just told, “See this rock? This is the rock we want.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
“Anything else, get rid of it. But keep these, put them in this.” What’s the thing that you put on a track that you put rocks in?

[Shep]
Trolley?

[Thomas]
Is it?

[Shep]
I don’t know. Minecart?

[Thomas]
Minecart? Yeah.

[Shep]
“What is the name of the cart that miners use in mines?”

[Thomas]
When they’re carting things around, you know.

[Shep]
Yeah. And also, no one there speaks English, hardly.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And John Cena’s character has automatically picked up the local language and is chatting with the other guys.

[Thomas]
It’s like really close to Portuguese. It’s just like a dialect of something that he kind of happens to know certain phrases in.

[Shep]
Right. Oh, it’s a mix of Portuguese and, you know, some of the language.

[Thomas]
Right, right. There’s got to be a scene where they’re in their, whatever they’re locked in at night. Cages or prisons or whatever cells. And Michael Cera is asking John Cena, “Oh, how did you become a pilot?” It’s the same thing. He just sort of fell into it.

[Emily]
“I was a surfer, and somebody-“

[Thomas]
Right. He’s just got this whole story about like, “Oh, I was doing this and then that happened and it went over here, and then I became this and did that, and then I met Richard Branson, coincidentally, and so I started working for him and…”

[Emily]
“Paid for my pilot’s license. And here we are.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He was on a plane when the pilot had a heart attack, and so he had to land the plane just with radio instructions.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And that’s how he discovered he could be a really good pilot.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
It was like, just because he was there, he learned how to fly a plane.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And maybe that’s a thing. That’s the lesson of the movie, is Michael Cera’s character is very rigid and uptight and, you know, stick to the schedule and don’t deviate in any way. “We have a plan. We don’t change it.” And John Cena’s like, “No, go with the flow. Go with the flow. Relax.”

[Thomas]
So when the plane initially crashes, then does Michael Cera wanna stay? Because he doesn’t know much about survivalism, but he knows you always stay with the plane.

[Shep]
I think it should be the opposite. John Cena wants to stay at the plane because he’s got survival training. You stay at the plane.

[Emily]
That’s what you do.

[Thomas]
Right. Yep, yep.

[Shep]
Right. It’s Michael Cera who’s radioed for help, and they’re like, “Look, we can’t get anyone out there for three days. We have a boat. If you were closer to the coast, you could radio your location, we could pick you up, but you’re in the jungle, so it’ll take, you know, seven days” or whatever, some larger amount of time than it would take to walk to the coast.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And so he’s like, “Okay, let’s walk to the coast.” So everything is his fault because he wouldn’t stay with the plane because he wanted to get to his meeting on time.

[Thomas]
Sure, sure.

[Emily]
Yeah, because we’ll recall that later when they have an argument just before the climax.

[Shep]
Oh, yes, of course.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
They’ve got to have the-

[Thomas]
Their big falling out, right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes. Sorry, you couldn’t hear that. But my eyes rolled all the way out of my head.

[Thomas]
All right, well, before we get to that big falling out and the climax, we need to take a break, so let’s do that now. And we’ll be back with our story about, let’s remember a Pencil.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. Our story, as we said right before the break, is about a Pencil. So where is the first instance of a pencil coming in handy being used?

[Shep]
When they find their directions.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because they need to know which way the coast is before they leave the plane.

[Emily]
How do they use the pencil to do that? Because I thought we determined they weren’t magnetic.

[Thomas]
He’s using the shadow of the pencil.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay, works for me. That’s enough explanation.

[Shep]
You stick it in the ground, and then you put a stone where the tip of the shadow is, and you wait some time. That shows you the direction that sun is moving.

[Emily]
Moving. And then you can determine which way is west and which way is east.

[Shep]
Yes. And that also tells you which way is north and which way is south.

[Emily]
Yes. Okay, that makes sense.

[Thomas]
So that’s the thing that John Cena knows and shows him.

[Shep]
Yes. So it’s John Cena that uses the pencil first?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I don’t like that because we want him to not like the pencils. I mean, that was the original pitch, but we’ve also changed a bunch about it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Maybe he’s okay with it.

[Shep]
Or maybe he wants to bring the pencils. And Michael Cera’s character is like, “No, I don’t want wooden pencils.” He’s got a clicker pencil, and he’s like, “This is the future. Live in the now, old man.”

[Thomas]
Right. They’re reusable, so they’re more economically friendly. They’re more ecologically friendly.

[Shep]
Right. They don’t waste as much graphite.

[Thomas]
Every part is replaceable. It’s not a one-time use thing.

[Shep]
Right. But John Cena’s character is like “Pencils, wooden pencils, have 1001 uses.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So he puts regular wooden pencils in Michael Cera’s laptop bag. Like, “Since you’re bringing a bag, carry these as well.” So they find the direction, and they set off, and then night starts to fall, so they stop and make camp. This is the second time they use pencils. They use the sharpener to shave off some of the wood on a pencil and use that to start a fire.

[Thomas]
Or a knife, I mean.

[Shep]
Or. Yeah, whatever. Do they also use the pencil to, like, make friction on a board to build a fire?

[Thomas]
Oh yeah, that’s a good idea.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, maybe that’s what Michael Cera assumes that John Cena’s gonna do. But he’s like, “What? No, I have a flint on the end of my blade.” Like, he’s like, “I am prepared.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
“I have these all-weather matches in the kit that I brought from the plane.”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
“The survival kit, like, you know, the bag of useful supplies, not the laptop.”

[Shep]
The fire gives away their position. They are discovered by the cult.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
And while hanging out at the cult, they get picked up by the soldiers.

[Thomas]
So when the cult women find these guys, are they forceful in bringing them back? Are they saying, “Oh, why are you guys sleeping in the jungle? We have, like, nice, warm huts you could stay in.” Or, “There’s a whole civilization just over this hill.” Or how do they-

[Shep]
Entice them?

[Thomas]
Or do they have them at spear point? Like, “You’re coming with us”? I mean, we could do that where at first it’s like, “Uh oh, we’ve been captured.” And then they get there, and it’s like a tiki bar.

[Emily]
Maybe those are, like, the soldier women, the policewomen?

[Thomas]
Hmm. The enforcers, right?

[Emily]
So they’re naturally leery of some random dudes out in their jungle. Were they sent by the soldiers?

[Shep]
I mean, one of them looks too soft to have been sent by anyone.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
But, yeah, I like them being captured or appearing to be captured forcefully.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And then the reveal that it’s this paradise of women.

[Emily]
Just this chill hippie cult full of women.

[Shep]
Yes. And they are down to clown.

[Emily]
Mm hmm. I will say we could add another use of the pencil just before they get captured. Would be because pencils are made out of an edible cedar, generally. So they could-

[Shep]
You’re in a jungle full of other plant matter.

[Emily]
And half the things are poisonous.

[Shep]
What I heard was half things are not poisonous.

[Emily]
And John Cena would know which ones are not.

[Shep]
Or he would just gamble with whatever.

[Thomas]
I was going to say.

[Emily]
He’s just gonna take the chance. 50/50.

[Shep]
Because it has always worked out for him in the past because of survivorship bias.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So he thinks things will always work out for him in the future, but they keep working out for him.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
I mean, I could see Michael Cera gnawing on a pencil and John Cena just eating whatever plants he has found. Michael Cera could be like, “This all could be poisonous.” And John Cena’s like, as he’s chewing, “Seems fine.”

[Thomas]
Maybe they’ve, like, collected a bunch of, some kind of fruit, and they find out later from the women, like, “Oh, yeah, you have to be careful because there’s another one that looks just like it that’s really poisonous.” And Michael Cera is like, “How do you tell the difference?” They’re like, “Well, if you eat the poisonous one, you die.” And John Cena’s like, “Huh, good thing that didn’t happen.” Like, it’s just water on a duck. You know, he just doesn’t even affect him.

[Emily]
Whatever.

[Thomas]
It doesn’t faze him because it didn’t happen.

[Shep]
He’s still eating one of them while he’s like, “Huh.”

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
Or maybe doesn’t kill you but gives you horrific diarrhea. And that’s the one that Michael Cera ate. So they get to the compound, and instead of partaking of the bounty, he’s just in the toilet for the first day.

[Emily]
Poop jokes are always funny.

[Shep]
The second night when it’s like, he’s, like, being swayed by the women, that’s when the soldiers show up.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Shep]
So he never catches a break.

[Thomas]
So he’s all excited, like, “Oh, I feel a lot better. It was just the one night.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“I’ve never had a stomach bug clear up that fast.” They even say that, like, “Oh, it makes you really sick for 8 hours” or something like that. And the next day he’s like, “It’s amazing. 8 hours. I feel great.” Okay. And so we know how they get caught. We know they get taken to the mine. So they have one pencil available. Is this where they bite down the ferrule and make a makeshift screwdriver to take the hinges off of the cage door and escape?

[Shep]
Yeah. It’s gotta be.

[Thomas]
And then they could use the graphite in that same pencil to short something electrical and cause the lights in the camp to go out.

[Shep]
I was trying to think of another way, you could use the pencil. I was like, “Oh, you know, Michael Cera uses it to dig the mortar around a stone block in the wall that he’s in. And when he finally gets it loose, he knocks it down and sticks his head through, and it’s like the guard room.” But then they would take the pencil away, so, like, well, that doesn’t work.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, do they need to get the other pencils? I feel like if they use the one to short something out, that destroys that pencil.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So now they need to get the other pencils.

[Shep]
They need to get the laptop bag, which also has the pencils in it.

[Thomas]
Right, right. That’s just like, how soon do we want them to have their other pencils back? And then when does Michael Cera’s mechanical pencil absolutely fail them? Because we want to see that the wooden pencil was the superior pencil, right?

[Shep]
Maybe it’s the mechanical pencil that he uses to dig the mortar out.

[Thomas]
Oh, right. Right, because it’s like a special titanium thing or something like that.

[Shep]
Right. It’s meant to last a lifetime.

[Thomas]
It’s- Right, right. I mean, the other option, I guess, is that his pencil does actually end up being useful in an unexpected way. It hasn’t been in all these other situations because only wooden pencil could be sharpened to get the shavings, only a wooden pencil you could clamp down the ferrule. Only a wooden pencil you’d be able to use to short out the thing. But in this one situation, the mechanical pencil, like, “Okay.”

[Emily]
Well, if it’s something like titanium or a hard metal, it could be used to block a door, keep it from slamming or locking or whatever. But a wooden pencil would have snapped.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Or that could be the stabbing pencil.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
It would be good for stabbing.

[Shep]
Okay. I still want him to dig out the stone and get that pencil taken away because-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So that could come back when they meet the soldiers again in the third appearance.

[Thomas]
Uh-huh.

[Shep]
One of the soldiers still has that pencil, like, in his pocket. That’s how they get it back, because it’s very useful.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s very useful.

[Thomas]
I like that.

[Emily]
Yeah. When they’re, like, trapped by whatever the third time, Michael Cera can spy it and be like, “Son of a bitch still has my pencil.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. That’s when he’s got his bravery.

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
“That’s my pencil!”

[Shep]
The soldiers take that pencil, put it back in the cell or another cell, and then later, when they get the laptop bag, which has wooden pencils in it, it doesn’t have his mechanical pencil, and he’s really upset, and he wants to, like, keep looking for it because he’s rigid like that.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And John Cena’s like, “We gotta go, we gotta go. This is our escape. You gotta leave that behind.” And so when he sees it the third time, he really wants to get it.

[Thomas]
How do they figure out that this is the company that they were coming to visit? This is the company that Michael Cera has hired.

[Shep]
When they meet with the investor, is that who it is, that this investor runs this company?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And they want that resource. That’s gotta be the reason.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Maybe that’s when he sees the soldier with his pencil in his pocket. It’s like, it has to be the same soldier. It’s not, you know, “I’m not mistaken identity. That’s my pencil. And he has it, so he has to be with the soldiers that captured us.” And those soldiers are with the investor. Like, they’re also guarding his compound or whatever.

[Thomas]
All right. So them taking down the…

[Shep]
Forced labor.

[Thomas]
The mining operation.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And escaping from that, that happens partway through, and then they do manage to make it to where the investor is.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Okay. I like that. So I’m trying to think about the story structure here. That feels like a big, shocking thing. That feels like it could be the end of the second act. The lowest low is realizing, “Oh, the investor is-“

[Shep]
Right. We thought we made it back to civilization and everything was going to be smooth sailing from here, but it turns out the investor is corrupt and actually is leading the people that had captured us and are forcing people into labor.

[Thomas]
How do we get them from the labor camp to the investor? Because their plan originally was to go to the coast.

[Shep]
Right. Well, they have to escape from the mining camp.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Do they make it to the coast and then they drop them off in the city?

[Shep]
They get on the boat, and the boat takes them to the investor’s compound.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s the investor’s boat.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So they do make it to the coast. Okay. Yeah. That’s who he calls.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. Why would you call anybody else?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
You’d call your contact in the place where you are in the country where you are.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So, yeah, that makes sense. So how do they defeat the investor? Or. I feel it- Does something else happen? It’s not just a realization that, “Oh, this guy’s a big jerk.”

[Shep]
No, because the big jerk has also, is wise to the fact that these two discovered his forced mining camp.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because the soldiers were chasing after them when they got to the coast. And so they barely get away to the quote-unquote “safety” of the boat, which takes them to the investor’s compound. But they’re all talking to each other.

[Thomas]
Right. So there’s, like, a moment of it being nice.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Where it’s like, “Oh, we’re in this guy’s beautiful villa in the jungle or on the seaside (or whatever), and we’re able to take a shower.”

[Emily]
Yeah. You see them in the white robes from the guest rooms. And-

[Thomas]
Right. They’re eating. He’s got this nice spread for them, and they’re like, “Oh, this is great.” And then they’re having a conversation, and then there’s a moment where it turns and you realize, oh, he’s known basically all along.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s unfortunate because his company had a lot of promise, and he was really looking forward to working with them.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. “I was going to give you a really good price.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“But then you died in a plane crash, and that was sad.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And then it’s the guards come out, and the one guy’s got the pencil, and they recognize them, and they’re like, “Oh, no.”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Okay, so how do they get away from that?

[Shep]
Well this could be the stabbing with the pencil scene. Since the guy has the pencil.

[Thomas]
What is the climax of the film? Is it defeating the investor?

[Shep]
It’s got to be defeating the investor, who is set up as the big bad. Although this also ruins Michael Cera’s company because they needed that investor, and so-

[Thomas]
Oh, they’re gonna go live in the jungle with the cult anyway, so.

[Emily]
Well, the cult’s gonna invest because they have lots of money.

[Shep]
Yeah, see, that’s coincidence again.

[Emily]
But the best kind. The 80s kind.

[Shep]
“Actually, I was a princess the whole time.” I do like the idea of the cult rescuing them in their attempted escape from the investor’s compound, because they’ve had problems with the soldiers in the past. They have this uneasy truce, but things are not going well, and these two guys got captured by the soldiers at the cult compound.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So, like, the uneasy truce is not, is no longer a truce. So we have the cult members potentially as among their rescuers. What about the other people at the mining camp?

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. Because it’s not just the men from the cult. There are-

[Emily]
Yeah. There are other villages and other places. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Did the other workers escape with them with the distraction that they created?

[Shep]
This is what I’m thinking. They caused a big enough distraction that the camp started falling apart, and the other people, the other workers also made their escape. And now it’s time to strike back at that evil investor. So what happens to our two guys at the end?

[Emily]
Michael Cera goes back to civilization and goes on the hunt for a new investor, and John Cena goes back to the cult.

[Thomas]
I feel like John Cena just, like, falls into something.

[Emily]
Just falls into some other job.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. They also get rescued by, like, the coast guard. And one of the people there is like, “Have you thought about being a soldier?”

[Thomas]
Or somehow they end up somewhere, and they get picked up by a scuba tour group. And so now he leads scuba tours or something. It’s going to be some weird total left turn of careers, which has been the story of his life. It’s just jumping from, between these careers that have seemingly no connection to each other.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So now he’s like, makes cheese or, you know, like whatever. Some, some-

[Emily]
Yeah, I was thinking some kind of chef thing.

[Thomas]
Strange thing.

[Shep]
So Michael Cera’s ending seems a little lackluster to me still.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Well, he is a little lackluster.

[Shep]
Well, the whole point, the character arc that he’s learning to not be so rigid and to go with the flow. And so if he goes back to what he was doing, which was looking for an investor that has this whatever material-

[Emily]
Does he join John Cena in becoming a dive instructor or cheesemonger? Does he change careers completely and go with the flow with him?

[Shep]
Or he goes back to the cult, thinking, “That was a big opportunity that I missed, and I want to have this idyllic life where all I got to do is sex women all the time.” But the men have been released from the mining camp.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So he gets back to the cult, and now there’s more men than women.

[Emily]
And they don’t need him.

[Shep]
They don’t need him.

[Thomas]
Right. “We’re not taking new applications at the moment.”

[Shep]
Oh, there was, like, one girl at the compound, the cult compound, that he seemed to have a connection with, although they never got together. And he gets back to the compound, and she’s like, “Oh, you made it. I want to introduce you to my husband.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s still kind of a lackluster ending, though.

[Emily]
Yeah. What could he do? What could we make him do?

[Shep]
He takes over the mining operation? He replaces the evil investor.

[Emily]
But he pays fair wages.

[Thomas]
Well, yeah, he makes it into a co-op. Because it’s still, like, a valuable resource.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. That would make his rigidity- bring use to his rigidity, but also show that he’s learning to be more flexible.

[Shep]
Yeah. And the opportunity is there because the investor was selling that mineral way below market price because he could afford it, because he had all these slave labor, the forced labor camp. But you could just sell it at market price and pay your workers.

[Thomas]
Right. Oh, sure. So we established earlier that he wants to be this wealthy CEO guy, and so he’s not going to be wealthy, but he’s going to get to live in this beautiful place and have people who respect him and…

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Use his skills.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but he still gets to use the skills that he’s, you know, got that degree for or whatever, his MBA.

[Shep]
Business management.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay. Yeah, that works. Is there anything else we need to figure out before we wrap it up? I feel like the third act is quite weak. We don’t really know how they get away from the investor. Like, we really don’t have much of a third act. It’s just sort of like, ah, they defeat the investor.

[Shep]
I mean, that’s a problem for the writers.

[Emily]
Action sequence.

[Shep]
Action sequence.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Insert action sequence here. So there has to be a door, as Emily was talking about earlier, that closes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That they could prop open with the titanium mechanical pencil to shimmy through or whatever.

[Thomas]
Right, right, right.

[Shep]
So that’s in there. Um, yeah. There’s not much that two people can do against an army at the evil investor’s compound. But they don’t have to do everything. They just have to start the fight.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Mmh.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Because everyone that they helped up to this point, this is where everyone comes together.

[Thomas]
Yes, yes.

[Shep]
So there’s a big fight between multiple forces and they get rescued, basically. So they don’t fight their way out. They’re not the heroes.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Although they did initiate the rebellion.

[Thomas]
How do all of the different villagers and cult people and stuff, how do they know to come and help fight?

[Emily]
Maybe the villagers follow- Not the villagers. The released laborers.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Maybe follow their, you know, follow their tracks or follow where the soldiers are going.

[Shep]
I think that they know where the evil investor’s compound is. It’s a compound. It doesn’t move around.

[Emily]
This is true. Do they just, because we’re saying some of those guys are from the cult village, so do they return to the cult village first, kind of explain what happened? And then-

[Shep]
They all go to their home villages.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So it’s not just the cult compound. It’s the cult compound and also all the villages in the area.

[Emily]
So now that the forced laborers are released, they go back and say, “Okay, now we have. Let’s use our resources to go up against this guy.”

[Shep]
Right. He’s got to go down.

[Emily]
It’s not so much coincidence, but it’s just, this is the time, this is the signal. Let’s do it.

[Shep]
Right. Because they just got released and now there’s- Maybe they weren’t sure, maybe the villages weren’t sure that these people were still alive in the forced labor camp.

[Emily]
Mmm.

[Shep]
But it’s like, “If we don’t stand up now, they’ll take back the power that they had.”

[Emily]
“And this is all just happen again.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So it’s now or never.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So they all converge on the compound.

[Shep]
Right. So it is a coincidence that John Cena and Michael Cera are there at the time because they were not the goal.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
But it’s not a coincidence that it’s happening at that time.

[Shep]
Right. Because it happened, because they caused a breakout.

[Thomas]
Because they got to be freed.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Anything else?

[Shep]
Are we setting up a sequel or is this a one-and-done? Because if we’re not, if it’s one and done, then you do the, you know, freeze frame and then text epilogue. What happens to this character?

[Emily]
They went on to do. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the list of things that John Cena does.

[Thomas]
Several other jobs.

[Shep]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, “He went on to do (this) and then (this) and then (this). He currently is a cheesemonger in Wisconsin, for now.”

[Shep]
Yes. Yeah.

[Emily]
I like that. Just for that bit.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Pencil. Did it put lead in your pencil or was it pencil-necked? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com. If you aren’t sure what to say to us, you could always send us an idea for an episode. There are plenty of interesting objects out there and we’d love to record a show about one that you suggest. This podcast is released every other Tuesday, so be sure to pencil it in so you can join Emily, Shep, and I on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

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